F98 



-OeS? 



THE PILGIUMj 



AN 



ORATION 



SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF NEW ENGLAND 



PHILADELPHIA 



DECEMBER 22d, I 



(Eowmemovatfott of tfje ILanTrfna of tfje JJtlfltims 



W. II. FURNESS. 



<J*** *»**^#*/W*~— 



PHILADELPHIA: 

PRINTED I. I K STREET. 

1846. 




Class. 



I 



Book 



fa 8 



THE STIRIT OF THE PILGRIMS. 



AN 

ORATION 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF NEW ENGLAND 

OF 

PHILADELPHIA 

DECEMBER 22d, 1846, 

IN 

<£ommcmovatfou of tljc "SLantHns of tijc tyilQvimn 

CCXXVI YEARS AGO, 



\\. II. FURNESS. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

PRINTED BY JOHN C. CLARK, 60 DOCK STREET. 
1846. 



5- 



3tV 






Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims. 
Philadelphia, Dec. 22d, 1846. 

REV. AND DEAR SIR, 

At a meeting of the Board of Officers of the Society of the Sons 
of New England, after the public exercises of this day, it was — "Re- 
solved, That the thanks of the Society be presented to the Rev. Mr. 
Furness for his eloquent Oration, and that a copy be requested for 
publication." 

It is with pleasure that we have the opportunity, officially, to 
communicate the same to you, and it will give us equal pleasure to 
receive your favorable response to the request submitted. 
With high respect, 

We are your ob't serv'ts, 

W. H. DILLINGHAM, 
JNO. W. CLAGHORN, 
JNO. T. S. SULLIVAN, 

Committee. 
To the Rev. Wm. H. Furness. 



Dec. 2'Sd, 1846. 
Gentlemen, 

In compliance with the request so courteously expressed, I place 
the accompanying MS. at your disposal. 

Respectfully, yours, 
, W. H. FURNESS. 

W. H. DlLLINGHAM, 
Jno. W. C LAG HORN, 

Jno. T. S. Sullivan, Esqs. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE PILGRIMS. 



Two hundred and twenty-six years ago, a vessel of a hun- 
dred and eighty tons burthen, the Mayflower, was floating on 
the waters of Massachusetts bay. It had brought from the 
old world one hundred and one persons of both sexes and of 
different ages. They disembarked. And we, who were born 
in that home which they made for themselves and their chil- 
dren, are met to commemorate their first landing, an event, 
now indubitably proved to be a cardinal fact in the world's 
history, not only by the great purpose which inspired it, but 
also by the beneficent results which have flowed from it. 

Yes, the Landing of the Fathers of New England is one of 
the grand pictures of History. At the first glance, we discern 
a fine harmony in it, a striking accordance between the central 
group and the natural scenery in the midst of which they stand. 
It has been remarked generally that inanimate nature always 
lends its beauty to man when he is achieving any noble deed, 
that the scene, the place of any great event sets it off, suiting 
the frame to the picture. A storm of unusual fierceness, we 
are told, was raging while Cromwell was dying. So also were 
the last hours of Napoleon accompanied. We perceive a fear- 
ful beauty in the correspondence between those stormy spirits 
and the uproar of the elements. In like manner, when Co- 
lumbus, led by a vision of opulent kingdoms in the West, 
came across the Atlantic, — as we behold him gazing upon the 
new land, we are impressed with the beautiful agreement be- 
tween the brightness of the spectacle on which his eyes are 
fixed, and the triumphant enthusiasm of the hero. The fra- 
grant breath of the new world appearing before him as if it 



had just risen out of the sea, the rich vegetation of the trop- 
ics — do they not strike us as accessories to the unity and 
grandeur of the picture? And so too, when our Pilgrim fa- 
thers first landed, — as we contemplate the event, a picturesque 
harmony hecomes visible hetween the actors and the scene. 
The wintry glooms, the rocky and icy coast, the ground co- 
vered with snow, and the chilling wind — all accord with the 
stern resolution in which that heroic company was clad as in 
coats of mail. To greet our fathers, when they came, Nature 
put on a garb of Puritan austerity. She received them with 
no oriental splendors. Her salutation was rough and dry, in 
the spirit of their own severe simplicity. But they never 
questioned their welcome. They sprung upon the shore; and 
as we descry them now, through the mists of more than two 
centuries, emerging from the dark back-ground of a wintry 
sea and sky, and standing upon the rocky threshold of their 
new home, girt with a steadfastness of purpose, of which the 
frost, that locked the earth in its chains, was only a faint sym- 
bol, the picture stands before us, rounded into a whole, and 
severely beautiful. 

But the landing of the Pilgrim fathers of New England is 
something more than a picture, pleasing to the imagination. 
That event had a meaning in it, a very simple meaning, and 
all the greater and the deeper for its simplicity. The spirit — 
the spirit which inspired that company, and which, as they 
landed, was mirrored in the solemn aspect of external nature, 
— it is for this that we honour them. What but this invests 
their memories with so saintly a heroism? It is not any spe- 
cial form of doctrine, any theological creed, of which they were 
the teachers and the witnesses, that makes this anniversary sa- 
cred. Over the hills and valleys of New England every wind 
of doctrine is now blowing; still the children of the Pilgrims 
of every name unite to do homage to their greatness. 

The}' claim our reverence, not as the founders of a sect, 
sectarian though they were, but as the martyrs of ideas, of 
invisible, impalpable principles of thought. Whether the prin- 



ciples that moved them, the aims that led them on, were great 
or trifling, true or false, I ask not now. Let it he that their ob- 
jects were altogether visionary, still I say, they had their life, 
not in things pertaining to the senses, to the body, but in ideas, 
in things pertaining to the spirit. When they appeared on these 
Western shores, they had snapt asunder the ties of kindred and 
home; and how dear those ties are, your own hearts at this 
festive season know full well. They had bidden farewell to 
the pleasant places, hallowed by the memories of childhood 
and love. They quitted the graves of their fathers, repressing 
the strong instinct which chains even the savage to the spot 
where the bones of his dead lie mouldering. They turned 
away from the elegancies and comforts of a refined social ex- 
istence, and threw themselves in their frail vessel upon the 
wild and capricious deep. We see them plunging into the 
darkness and the storm, bending their way to an unknown 
world. They near the shore upon whose rocks sit Cruelty 
and Famine, but they know no fear. They find what they 
sought. 

And what did they seek? What impulse drove them hither? 
For what purpose did they come? Not, I say, for any vision 
of gold, not to gratify the lust of conquest and power, not to 
revel in the luxuries of a voluptuous clime, not for any thing 
primarily relating to bodily well-being, to animal enjoyment. 
They came seeking food for the soul, that invisible nutriment 
which the mind finds in itself, in the subjects of its own 
thoughts. Things, which lie nowhere within the precincts of 
the senses, which the inward eye of the mind discerns, which 
conscience recognises', which the heart hungers for, — such 
were the things which led onwards our Pilgrim fathers, and, 
as with the wings of angels, fanned the fire of life in them, till 
it was kindled into a flame of indomitable energy, and they 
were enabled to surrender all things for the sake of the ideal 
which their souls craved. 

Thus our Fathers, looking not at the visible but at the invi- 
sible, exemplify and attest the higher nature of man. They 
prove that man liveth not by bread alone, that there is other 



8 

food for him than that which cntereth hy the mouth and gocth 
into the stomach. The Pilgrims came hither, not like raven- 
ing animals seeking something to eat, but as mighty spirits, 
nerved for doing and enduring by that nourishment which the 
mind assimilates, and which faith digests. They vindicate our 
intellectual being, that nature within our nature, which you 
may call the mind, the spirit, the divinity, or what you will, 
but which no name can define. In a word, they are wit- 
nesses to the reality of the soul. Honour be to them for that! 
Were there nothing more to be said for them, for this be their 
memory revered forever. The landing of the Pilgrim fathers 
is a grand demonstration of the spirit that is in man. It dis- 
closes the fact that, diminutive as man may be in his visible 
appearance, in his bodily shape, he is indefinable in his inmost, 
nature, and sustains relations to things of which his physical 
organs take no cognizance. 

Possibly, in saying this, that our Fathers, in coming hither, 
illustrate the greatness of man, I may seem to say very little. 
Has not assurance of the same fact been given to the world a 
thousand times over? Religion, every where existing, aye, 
and superstition in its most degraded forms — does it not bear 
witness that man stands related to something besides matter, 
that his being transcends the sphere of his senses, that far as 
his eye reaches, he has an inward sense that reaches further 
and deeper still, that strong as his arm is to subdue this earth, 
there is a strength in him greater than that? Why, even in 
their most homely occupations, when men are toiling appa- 
rently only for bread or for gold, the bright signs and marks 
of their higher nature shine forth through the dust and dirt in 
which they grub and grovel. Still they draw the life of their 
enterprise not out of the earth, but from an imaginary world; 
and in all places of human activity, over every ship that sails, 
in every counting room, and in every shop, a multitudinous 
host of visions do incessantly hover, and men are occupied 
with things not realized, and every where they are tyrannized 
over by that mysterious imaginative faculty, which is the 
pledge of our relationship to things unseen. 



I know very well that those who are occupied with the 
ordinary pursuits of life are prone to be very skeptical about 
immaterial realities. They boast themselves practical, mat- 
ter-of-fact men. They will have nothing to do with any 
thing that cannot be computed by their standards of silver 
and gold, or bank paper. They believe their own eyes, and 
only their own eyes. Their faith is at their fingers' ends in- 
deed, but it is only there. And yet in the fluctuations of 
trade, amidst the tumbling ruins of their fortunes, how plainly 
oftentimes does it appear that these very persons have been 
living, moving, and having their being, not in the actual, 
but in an ideal world of their own! The veriest miser, 
whose whole soul would seem to be concentrated in the itch- 
ing palm of his hand — does not his brain teem with images 
and visions? His nature is proved to be a great nature by its 
very capacity of degradation. His appetite for accumulation 
is sharpened by that imaginative faculty which allies him to 
the invisible. 

Wherever we turn, we behold demonstrations of the fact, 
that man is made to live upon other food than that which 
comes out of the ground; that his true nourishment is the 
produce of an invisible country; that he feeds upon ideas. 
At this very hour, what is it that is prompting our young 
men to sacrifice kindred and home, as our fathers did, and all 
the arts and blessings of peace, and go upon a pilgrimage to 
the bloody shrine of inhuman War? Why are they rushing 
to the scene of danger and death? Is it the scent of blood 
which they snuff from afar? Do they fly like vultures to the 
field of carnage? Oh no! disgraceful as the war is, in which 
we are engaged, a war, in which our glory is our shame, and 
our victories are defeats, still, in common with all wars, it 
shows that men are kindled to action and self-sacrifice by 
ideas, by the idea of country, by the idea of renown, by the 
glowing visions of their own imagination, and so powerfully 
swayed by these, that, at their bidding, they joyfully surren- 
der all the endearments of life, and go to embrace danger as a 
bride. 



10 

There is a superficial philosophy that is continually tell- 
ing us, that men are swayed only hy their palpable inte- 
rests, that if you think to move individuals or nations to 
any great act of justice, to any noble effort in behalf of the 
sacred rights of man, you must appeal to their interests, you 
must bait the truth with profit, you must show them some 
substantial advantages to be gained, which they can sec, and 
handle, and weigh, and whose value they can arithmetically 
compute. But I say, it is not so. It is never so. Men are 
continually sacrificing their interests, their dearest interests, 
life itself, to ideas, to the idea of glory, to the sentiment of 
patriotism; and the sight of a mere piece of painted cloth, 
floating idly on the air, the emblem of national honour, will 
set them all a-flame. Never have men been moved to any 
great and world-stirring achievements by the consideration of 
their interests, however plain those interests may have been. 
In all those great revolutions, in those momentous periods, 
when nations have gone forward, when the course of centu- 
ries has been determined, the grand moving spring at such 
periods has never been a calculation of visible interests; but 
great ideas., invisible principles, have seized the mind of man, 
lifting him off his feet, carrying him upward and onward, as 
in a chariot of fire, far above the narrow circle of his interests, 
aye, and above himself; and thus has Humanity been ad- 
vanced. 

And therefore, by the way, although we may well mourn 
bitterly over the disgraceful contest in which our country is 
at this present engaged, we may find cause of great encourage- 
ment and hope in the evidence which this very war furnishes, 
that the people of this land are not yet so enervated by a pros- 
perity unexampled in the history of the world, not yet so har- 
dened by the sordid influences of self-interest, but that they 
are an imaginative people still, still unquestionably suscepti- 
ble of the inspiration of ideas. For my own part, when, in 
a case in which no principle of right is involved, and every 
dictate of magnanimity is despised, I see the hearts of the 
young carried away, and the wisdom of the old paralyzed by 



11 

the vague idea of national honour, I cannot doubt that the soul 
of this country will sooner or later be stirred to its very cen- 
tre by the sacred idea of Universal Freedom, by the blessed 
vision of Everlasting Peace, by the inalienable Rights of Man, 
by the benign principles of our common Christianity; for 
these are the things by which, in the nature of things, in the 
unchangeable wisdom of the Creator, man is fashioned to be 
inspired as by no thing else. At all events, of one thing we 
may be assured — it is taught by the whole history of the 
world and the whole philosophy of our nature, and religion 
demands it — that if this nation is to fulfil the sacred promise 
which it has given to Humanity, the great hope which it has 
inspired, if it is to be true to the principles b)< which it pro- 
fesses to live, if it is ever to cleanse itself of that inhuman 
bondage which it now cherishes and fights for, and which is 
the one particular shame of its freedom, it will never be by 
motives of interest, but by the inspiring influence of great 
ideas, kindling this people into a generous enthusiasm, and 
ravishing all hearts with the ineffable beauty and power of 
those simple principles of right, which now, alas! float 
vaguely before us as impracticable abstractions. 

But after all, although under all aspects, in all his pursuits, 
in peace and in war, man unconsciously demonstrates his pos- 
session of a high imaginative nature, by which he is related to 
the invisible world of ideas, and draws life and strength there- 
from, still I turn again to the Pilgrim Fathers of New Eng- 
land, and again I say: Let us honour them for this, if for 
nothing else, that they have vindicated the greatness of man's 
nature. 

They were, many of them, persons of high culture and of 
gentle blood, the natives of a country wrought all over and 
embellished with all that could fascinate the intellect and the 
heart, made sacred by venerable seats of learning, by places 
famous in history, by homes embosomed in the graceful asso- 
ciations of domestic love. How tenderly they loved their 
country, how carefully they strove to cherish the memory of 



1 



12 

the places they quitted; is apparent in the names which they 
gave to the places to which Ihey came. But they trod under 
their feet all considerations of policy, all the seductions of 
ease and affection, and joyfully accepted the wild guidance ol 
the free winds and waves, and so asserted the supremacy of 
the ideal world over the actual. Thus have they revealed 
human greatness. 

Under this aspect they stand forth in striking contrast with 
the multitude of their own, and of all times. As they left the 
shores of Europe, no doubt they were pitied by thousands, 
and regarded as going upon a fool's errand. We can almost 
hear the mocking laughter, the charges of frantic enthusiasm, 
of senseless fanaticism, which rung after them from the po- 
lished circles, upon which many of them had turned their 
backs. But these they regarded as little as the winds that 
howled around them; and the event, showing so triumphantly 
as it now d&es that they were objects, not of pity or laughter, 
but of the profoundest admiration, admonishes us that we must 
take heed how we indulge in the luxury of contempt and ridi- 
cule, seeing how inevitably Time will turn the tables upon us, 
and make us ridiculous forever, if we chance to pour our con- 
tempt upon those whom Posterity shall delight to honour, and 
whose names shall illustrate our age. There is enough, hea- 
ven knows, for pity in the world; there is matter enough for 
ridicule, without our making ourselves contemptible, as we 
certainly shall do in the end, if we sneer at those who differ 
from us, simply because we cannot understand them, nor enter 
into the spirit by which they are moved. 

But so it has beeji from the foundation of the world. In 
science, in literature, in religion, in all its highest and best in- 
terests, the progress of the world has been obstructed, not 
more by the brute ignorance, the superstition, the depravity 
of men, than by the contempt of the wise, and the ridicule of 
the prudent. How strikingly was this the case in regard to 
that highest fact in history, the introduction of the Christian 
religion. The boasted wisdom of the world laughed it to 
scorn; the profound historian of Rome treated it with con- 



13 

tempt; and the mighty influence of the religious and the re- 
spectable was directed to the extinction of that light, even in 
blood. And so it has been in other and lesser instances. It 
has been hard to overcome the inertia of ignorance; but the 
intellectual and spiritual pride of those who have had the es- 
tablished institutions of learning, and science, and religion, in 
charge, has also been a serious obstacle to the progress of 
knowledge and truth. At the present clay, when inventions 
and discoveries in science of the most magnificent import are 
following, one upon another, with such startling rapidity, we 
may well hope that sensible men will be shamed out of the 
folly of despising things simply because they are new and 
strange, and have never been dreamed of by their philosophy. 
But in other and far more serious matters we need to be 
warned how we indulge in hasty judgments, in senseless de- 
nunciations, in thoughtless ridicule, lest it turn out, by and 
by, that we have made only ourselves contemptible and ridi- 
culous, and there will be no honour for our memories. The 
warning that we need we may find this day, one of the admo- 
nishing recollections of which is: that the Fathers of New 
England, the men whom we honour for their wisdom and he- 
roism, the founders of states, the head-workmen among those 
who reared this great American Empire, were pronounced by 
multitudes in their own day to be enthusiasts and fanatics, as 
wild and as hair-brained as any to whom the present genera- 
tion attribute the same character. Sons of New England, it 
is to little purpose that you commemorate your fathers, you 
do not enter into the spirit of the occasion which now calls us 
together, if, from the contrast of what our fathers appeared to 
be to the men of their own day, with what they are now 
proved to have been, we do not learn this much at least: to 
be very cautious how we despise those whose aims, visionary 
as they may seem, are yet on their very face pacific and be- 
neficent; whose zeal, fanatical as it may appear, is neverthe- 
less quickened into a burning hatred of Wrong, into a con- 
suming thirst of the heart, which nothing but the Freedom 
and Improvement of the whole world can appease. Let the 



14 

sons of the Pilgrims, boasting such an ancestry, have no smile 
of scorn, but only tears of reverent sympathy for those who 
run mad for Justice and Humanity. 

I have spoken of the Fathers of New England as men, who 
by their unworldly aims, by their spiritual purposes, attest the 
manhood of universal man. But what specially were their 
purposes? What precisely were the ideas to which they have 
shown themselves so self-devoted? The grand idea which 
dwelt at the centre of their being, which was the soul of their 
working, was freedom, freedom in the highest and most sacred 
concerns, freedom to worship God according to the dictates 
of their own consciences. But I am not going to make any 
unfounded claim for them in this regard, nor is there any 
need. That they had caught inspiring glimpses of religious 
freedom is abundantly clear. The existence of this great na- 
tion attests it. Whatsoever of freedom there is in our institu- 
tions, is in great part, the product of that germ of liberty, 
which our fathers planted in the rocky soil of New England. 
The farewell words which were addressed to them by their 
pastor, John Robinson, as they were leaving Leyden to come 
to these shores, are the very accents of liberty. "I charge 
you," said he to the Pilgrims, " before God and his blessed 
angels, that you follow me no further than you have seen me 
follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord has more truth yet 
to break forth out of his holy word. I cannot sufficiently be- 
wail the condition of the reformed churches, who are come 
to a period in religion, and will go at present no further than 
the instruments of their reformation. Luther and Calvin were 
great and shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated 
not into the whole counsel of God. I beseech you, remember 
it, it is an article of your church covenant, that you be ready 
to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from 
the written word of God." Such was the language, on the 
shores of Europe, of the pastor of the flock from which our 
fathers came. In the earliest period of the history of New 
England, we have Governor Ilaynes of Connecticut writing 



15 

to Roger Williams, after this manner: " I think, Mr. Wil- 
liams, I must confess to you, that the most wise God hath pro- 
vided and cut out this part of his world for a refuge and re- 
ceptacle of all sorts of consciences." And hear the words of 
Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, for whom is 
claimed the great distinction of being "the first man in mo- 
dern Christendom," to assert the principle of religious liber- 
ty in all its breadth. "No person in this Colony," says he, 
"shall be molested or questioned for matters of conscience to 
God, so he be loyal and keep the peace. Sir, we must part 
with lands and lives before we part with this jewel." Where 
such sentiments were cherished, we may well conjecture that 
the atmosphere was not altogether unfavorable to liberty, 
although Roger Williams himself, for the largeness of his doc- 
trine, was banished from Massachusetts, and the unholy fires 
of persecution were kindled there for the followers of George 
Fox. 

That our Fathers comprehended intellectually the great 
principle of freedom in all its extent, as it was comprehended 
by Roger Williams for instance^ cannot be maintained. Their 
main principle seems, by some facts in their history, to 
have been, that all men were free to think for themselves, 
provided they thought as they did: a very considerable pro- 
viso, it must be confessed. But their claim to our reverence 
is not to be extinguished on this score. For even we, their 
children, who are well advanced into the third century which 
has opened upon the world since their landing, and who are 
surrounded by the lights of a more cultivated time, have not 
yet got the principle' of religious freedom wrought into our 
being, infused into our blood. It is true there is a rare de- 
gree of toleration among us; but it is the toleration of those 
who are indifferent to all opinions, because they are zealously 
attached to none. It is true, too, that the principles of free- 
dom lie at the foundation of our forms of government, distinct- 
ly and broadly recognised; but, nevertheless, we have not yet 
reached a point whence we can look down upon our fathers. 
There were giants in those days still. And we are dwarfs in 



If) 

the comparison, and must be satisfied to look up to them for 
some time to come. Happy will it be for us if we recognise 
their superiority, and aspire to reach the same eminence. And 
this \vc shall do, if we really honour them, if we mean any 
thing by the commemorative service of this day. 

I am not going to magnify the past at the expense of the 
present. Let us be just all around. This country is a land 
of freedom, great appearances and facts to the contrary not- 
withstanding. But, then, the true glory of our freedom does 
not lie in our profession of freedom, comprehensive and 
formal as that is. Our great national creed is, like many 
other creeds, to a melancholy extent a dead letter. Still, I 
say there is freedom here, a very great degree of comparative 
civil and religious freedom; and it is found not in our logical 
speculations and statements, but in the instinct, in the spirit, 
in the tendencies of freedom, which, however much they may 
have to struggle with, are nevertheless strong in this country. 
Here lies our hope, in the free tendencies of this nation. 

But it is in this very respect, in the spirit of liberty, which 
is the most cheering characteristic of the present, that the Pil- 
grim fathers far excel us. Imperfectly as they comprehend- 
ed the principle, partial as was the glimpse they had caught 
of it, still freedom was with them a perfect passion, to this 
extent at least, that for the sake of it, they sacrificed country 
and home, and turned away from the abodes of civilization, 
and came to a horrid wilderness, prepared to endure every 
privation, and brave every danger, and consider themselves 
as having gained more than the world could give, by the ex- 
change. Their love of freedom is to be remembered to their 
immortal honour, because, so far as it went, it was no dead 
profession, no sickly and transient emotion, but a steady and 
consuming fire in their hearts, and they were inflamed by it 
to acts of heroic self-devotion. 

And now in respect of self-sacrificing loyalty to their own 
free convictions, shall the sons of New England be so fool- 
hardy as to challenge comparison with the Fathers? What! at 
this juncture of public affairs, in which every man of us has 



17 

the deepest interest, shall we place ourselves side by side with 
those self devoted men of old, when the slightest risk, when 
the merest considerations of policy deter us from the exer- 
cise of that freedom of thought and speech, the exercise of 
which we know to be our right and our duty? I believe that 
there are thousands and thousands of New England men, who 
in their hearts consider the war which is now raging to the 
south, as unchristian, barbarous, inhuman. As the sons of the 
brave Pilgrims then, why, in God's name, do they not speak 
out? Why are they not faithful to their convictions as 
their fathers were to theirs ? Why, brothers, is not our na- 
tive land at this very hour, all electric with the spirit of the 
Past? Where is the fearless independence of our ancestors? 
Why do not the thunders of remonstrance roll out from the 
deep heart of New England? Where is 

"The voice of Massachusetts, of her free sons and daughters, 
Deep calling unto deep aloud, — the sound of many waters]" 

Alas, the free thoughts of men rise and die away there unex- 
pressed, and the silence of New England at this crisis, is more 
melancholy than the awful desert stillness which was first 
broken by the voices of our Pilgrim fathers. 

Since we so poorly sustain comparison with our fathers, it 
ill becomes us to sit in judgment upon them, for their imper- 
fect ideas of spiritual freedom. They were men in earnest. 
For their own convictions they made every sacrifice. They 
exiled themselves voluntarily from their own country. They 
came to a bleak and cheerless desert, that they might in peace 
worship God according to their own consciences. And when 
others came among them, contradicting, questioning, con- 
demning, that which they clung to as the truth, and for which 
they had forsaken friends and home, it was simply past their 
endurance. They could not bear it. They ought to have 
borne it. Yes, they ought. And they would have borne it, 
you say, had they understood what is meant by religious free- 
dom. Undoubtedly they would. But, before we condemn 
c 



18 

them, we must be devoted to our convictions as enthusiasti- 
cally as they were to theirs, and then we shall he ahle to es- 
timate the trial to which they were put, the trial of patience, 
one of the very hardest of the Christian virtues, when they 
found themselves beset in their desert-home by the very vex- 
ations of dissent which they had left the old world to get 
rid of. When we appreciate this trial, we shall see that 
their task was no easy one to the infirmity of human nature; 
and we shall be ready to forgive them, and honour them for 
what they were, and not condemn them for what they were 
not. 

Here, brothers, let me remark, that as we are met to com- 
memorate the past, it may possibly be that such allusions as 
I have made to the present, may be deemed unseasonable. 
But I pray you, remember the day and the deed which we 
celebrate. The past is unprofitable if it docs not throw light 
upon the present. Our fathers did a hard work, and it is no 
easy work to pay due honour to their memory. Words- 
worth, in his lines on Rob Roy's grave, hath said, 

" Forgive me if my phrase seems strong — 
"A poet worthy of Rob Roy, 
"Must scorn a timid song." 

And so, if we would worthily celebrate our Pilgrim fathers, 
we must note the contrast between them and ourselves; we 
must strive to catch some portion of their spirit. We must 
recall their images, not for idle amusement, but that they may 
live again in their children. 

The free spirit which inspired the Fathers of New England, 
was fostered by the circumstances in which they were placed, 
when they arrived on these shores. Inclement as was the 
season at which they came, and rocky as was the soil on which 
they settled, the simple circumstance that they fixed their 
abode on the sea coast, was favourable to the growth of free- 
dom. Sir James Mackintosh remarks in his history of Eng- 
land, that liberty in Germany was preserved at the sources of 



19 

the Rhine, amid the mountains, and at its mouths on the coast; 
those positions being favourable to freedom, by the sense of 
security and independence which they promoted. Moun- 
tains are natural fortresses, and they who dwell in them, feel- 
ing themselves guarded and safe, become fearless and free. 
Hence the familiar phrase of the poet, " the mountain-breath 
of liberty." The sea-coast also, while it develops man's pow- 
ers by inviting him to enterprise, serves to cut him off from 
contact with others, and consecjuently from aggression, and 
thus also creates a feeling of independence. And so we dis- 
cern great truth in the more than once quoted lines of the first 
of living poets: — 

" Two voices are there ; one is of the sea, 
"One of the mountains; each a mighty voice; 
" In both, from age to age, Thou didst rejoice, 
" They were thy chosen music, Liberty !" 

That music can be heard only upon one very simple condi- 
tion. We must have ears to hear. It was heard by our 
Fathers. It was the grand accompaniment of their majestic 
work. It was the music to which they laboured in building 
a free commonwealth. May the ears of the present genera- 
tion, too often, alas! deafened by the clattering engines 
of trade, or filled, perchance, with cotton, — may the ears 
of the sons of New England be unstopped, and may we, 
too, learn to breathe, and speak, and act in harmony with the 
great agencies of Nature, keeping time to the lofty and on- 
ward march of her music. 
/ 
Another circumstance which was favourable to the free 
spirit of our Fathers, and which has had no slight influence 
in forming the character of their descendants, is the climate 
of the country to which they came. It is severe, and the soil 
rocky and ungenial. Had the Pilgrims been only a com- 
pany of adventurers seeking subsistence or gain, they would 
scarcely have landed, or they would have remained only to 
die. But they were something more and better. They hun- 



20 



it 



gered for food. The} - were in danger of starvation. But, 
amidst the pressure of physical necessity, they never forgot 
their spiritual wants. At one and the same time they sought 
the food that cometh out of the earth, and the bread that 
cometh down from heaven. They were bent, not merely 
upon living, but upon living for a purpose, to realize their 
ideal, to found a free and religious state. They lost no time, 
amidst all their privations, in securing opportunities of spi- 
ritual growth and culture, and accordingly we find, that in 
kss than sixteen years after their first landing, they had pro- 
vided the means of a liberal education. Having such high 
aims, being inspired with a great spirit, it could not be but 
that, hard as the struggle was, they should come off con- 
querors over a stern climate and a barren soil. Matter must 
yield to spirit. It is the law of God. And so all physical 
hardships became the ministers and servants of the resolute 
Fathers of New England. The effect of the climate upon the 
domestic character of that region is obvious. The storms and 
snows of its long winters drive men in-doors to cherish their 
household joys, and to draw close the ties of family. The 
niggardliness of nature tended also to promote frugality and 
economy, and to sharpen the inventive faculties. What could 
not be done in one way, must be done in another; and so inge- 
nuity was exercised in devising ways and means. And thus 
the character of the descendants of the Pilgrims has become 
marked for acuteness, for the readiness with which they 
change hands and fit themselves to new pursuits and to all 
trades; so that now-a-days it is hardly possible, by any fluc- 
tuations in our national policy, to defeat their commercial suc- 
cess. Tariffs or no tariffs, banks or no banks, it is all one to 
the men of New England. They will get something more 
than a living any how. But I have no desire now to take up 
a strain of self-laudation. For I apprehend that humility is 
not always one of the most conspicuous traits of the New Eng- 
land character. I would not be censorious; but it is well, by 
the way, to look at our faults, and therefore I may be per- 
mitted to say, that the left hand in New England sometimes 



21 

seems to be almost as cunning as the right, for it is very apt to 
find out and to point out the good which the right is doing. 
We are rather too self-conscious a people. The enterprise of 
New England is great, but it is none the better for our own 
praises. " Let another man praise thee, and not thine own 
mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips." 

There is one other circumstance in relation to our Fathers 
that demands a grateful recognition; and that is, that they 
were Englishmen, that they came from the land of Shaks- 
peare and Milton, that we inherit through them the treasures 
of a literature, second in wealth to that of no other nation on 
earth. We cannot estimate our obligations and our privileges 
in this respect. Our fathers loved the land of their birth, and 
in settling here they believed that they were extending its bor- 
ders and its renown. Mistake me not; I pass no commenda- 
tion on the government of England. Like all governments, 
its aim is power. But it is restrained, and made to serve the 
cause of human freedom (whenever it does serve it), by the 
public opinion, by the free spirit of its people. Of that free 
spirit our fathers largely partook. They came, charged with 
it, to this new world. They breathed it abroad over the land, 
and the wilderness was glad, and began to blossom as the 
rose. 

And now, Sons of New England, shall we not take heart, 
when we mark what our fathers achieved through their brave 
and unstipulating fidelity to their own convictions. We are 
prone to be disheartened and to despair, to let things take 
their course, even though that course be evil and ruinous in 
our eyes. We feel all our efforts to be palsied as by some in- 
exorable necessity. We have no strength to be loyal to our 
own convictions. And yet in respect of the circumstances in 
which we are placed, mark the difference between us and our 
fathers. Our Fathers, when they landed, stood on the borders 
of a rude continent, unreclaimed from barbarism. They were 
brought into conflict with brute and stubborn matter. But 



22 

they had a spirit within them awake to spiritual aims, to invisi- 
ble principles, from which thej r drew a strength before which 
the solid earth became plastic, and so they made the desert 
like Eden, like the Garden of the Lord, and became the crea- 
tors of a new and belter world. We, on the other hand, are 
surrounded by a living world, a world of beings like our- 
selves, and we are called upon to act upon one another, upon 
the brothers of our flesh and our spirit, allied to us by that 
nature, "one touch of which makes the whole world kin." 
The materials upon which we are required to act, which we 
are to mould by our spiritual force, if we have any spiritual 
force, if the high faith of the Fathers yet dwells in the hearts 
of the sons — the materials which we, I say, are in our day and 
generation to assist in fashioning to order and beauty, are all 
made to our hand. They lie all open and thirsting for the be- 
neficent influence of great ideas. The living world of man- 
kind has well been compared to a cunningly tuned musical 
instrument. "Strike one string and all the strings begin 
sounding." 

Be followers, then, of your fathers. Prove your relation- 
ship to them by a kindred faith, by those ties of the soul 
which transcend the ties of blood, and your influence shall be 
potent like theirs. You shall become so many living centres 
of Life, and Freedom, and Power, and so help forward that 
new creation, which is more glorious far than that at which 
the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God 
shouted for joy. 



BOARD OF OFFICERS. 



President. 
SAMUEL BRECK. 

Vice Presidents. 
SAMUEL H. PERKINS, JOSEPH R. CHANDLER. 

Treasurer. 
SAMUEL BRADFORD. 

Secretary. 
JOHN T. S. SULLIVAN. 

Directors. 

JOHN W. CLAGHORN, JOHN TOWNE, 

JOHN MASON, WILLIAM WHITNEY, 

CHARLES TOPPAN, GEORGE W. LORD, 

ALFRED L. ELWYN. 

Chaplains. 
WILLIAM H. FURNESS, 
JOEL PARKER, D.D. 
MARK A. D. W. HOWE. 

Physicians. 
ORLANDO H. PARTRIDGE, 
HENRY BOND, 
HEBER CHASE. 

Counsellors. 
GARRICK MALLORY, 
WILLIAM H. DILLINGHAM, 
ALBRON P. BRADBURY. 

Auditors. 

EDWIN BOOTH, 
JOSEPH COFFIN, 
GEORGE F. PEABODY. 



